This Day in History

[Amnorix]

Today...

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Sofa King

I thought he might have meant Dwight (that much was on wikipedia)... but i hadn't considered someone born in 1890, to be young, up and coming 50 years later, but i suppose 50 isn't all that old after all...

I'm not saying he took some bright lieutenant and put him into two star rank overnight. But he threw off the shackles of the traditional "seniority is everything" system.

[Jenson71]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

1888. At 12:30 a.m., Mary Ann Nichols, a 43 year old alcoholic prostitute left a pub that she frequented and returned to the boarding house where she was living. She was turned away, however, as she had failed to pay and she indicated with her last words that she would soon return with the money in hand. By 2:30 a.m. she was seen by her flatmate, Nelly Holland, who spoke with her and learned that she had a number of successes and could have paid for her bed, but had unfortuntely bought more alcohol. At about 3:40 a.m. her body was found lying on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance about 150 yards from the London Hospital. Her throat had been slit twice, there was a deep wound in her abdomen and several incisions across the abdomen and right side of her body. The abdominal injuries were made after she was already dead from the slitting of her throat.

Jack the Ripper had struck for the first time.

This was a very exciting paragraph. Nicely done.

[Jenson71]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

1870. The Battle of Sedan, between the forces of Prussia and France. The Prussian forces won a decisive victory, including the capture of Emperor Napoleon III. The result effectively decided the war, though fighting would continue for some time yet. The fighting would continue under a provisional government, however, as the Second French Empire collapsed immediately upon Napoleon III's capture, in a bloodless revolution. As a result of the Prussian victory in the war, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine was taken from France and made part of Germany, where it would remain as a bone of contention until it was given back to France following the end of WWI.

"Think of them always; speak of them never." (About Alsace and Lorraine).

Imagine French children being taught this in their day schools, the pride and accompanying hurt for their nation swelling in their souls.

[Jenson71]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

September 1.

1715. After 72 years of reign, the longest of any monarch in European history, King Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, dies.

I've been to his Palace of Versailles. (I say his because of his expansion of the former hunting lodge that really made it into the symbol of decadence and absolute monarchy we know it as). Unfortunately, while I was there, the incredible Hall of Mirrors (where the Versailles Peace Treaty was signed) was under construction. It was effectively the Hall of Plywood.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Jenson71

This was a very exciting paragraph. Nicely done.

Hey thanks. I'm doing pretty much all original writing here, as I'm using the opportunity to improve my creating writing as opposed to the boring legal writing that dominates my life. I also did a bunch of cut/paste from other sites very early in this thread but felt like that was cheating. Why not just post the link and add nothing of value. Doing it this way forces me to add my own knowledge and/or do some additional research on topics that particularly interest me and cobble together something coherent.

I occassionally fantasize about writing a novel, or even historical writing, but I know full well I'll never get around to doing it. Ah well. This is as close as I'll ever get, I suppose.

[Sofa King]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

I'm not saying he took some bright lieutenant and put him into two star rank overnight. But he threw off the shackles of the traditional "seniority is everything" system.

Yeah that's what i was piecing together outta the deal... Be interesting to know who else he promoted like that, and if anyone had great success...

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Sofa King

Yeah that's what i was piecing together outta the deal... Be interesting to know who else he promoted like that, and if anyone had great success...

My brief review couldn't find references to the list or who was on it, though I definitely remember a few references to it sprinkled around in the book. Not like "list" is in the index, though, so...

I did, however, find a number of references to the need to weed out the old crowd, so I'll post those.

Originally Posted by Ed Cray

This blue-eyed general with a gaze that drilled incompetents had few illusions about the Army and its present capabilities. . . . As a young officer on a mapping trip three decades earlier, he had needed fourteen signatures to get rations for his men; that had hardly changed. Intelligence from General Staff to battalion level was a scorned dumping ground for misfits and time-servers.

There were plenty of those in all branches, often in high places, "conservatives" as he thought of them, resistant to reform. "I am comfing more and more to find, in the Army, taht if a thing ahs nto been done it is tremendously hard to get anyone today in favor of doing it."

Marshall differed too from toher army officers in his willingness to rely on younger men, even enlisted men.

pg. 125.

Originally Posted by Ed Cray

During a recess in the Senate appropriation eharings of August 7, Marshall delayed his return to the Munitions Building to talk privately to Senator Byrnes about a pressing problem. If he was to build an army for war, Martshall explained, he had to have troop leaders fit for combat. Now he was stymied. Four months earlier, he had appeared before the House Military Affairs Committee seeking a bill that would permit the War Department to rpomote younger officers by retiring older men no longer fit for field service. Marshall meant to wipe out the dreaded hump.

The Army was different from civilian life, Marshall had told the committee. "One does acquire experience and jdugment with the years, but also, unfortunately, we lose the resiliency of tendons and muscles. . . . We may have the wisdom of the years, but we lack -- I know I do in many respects -- the physical ruggedness of more youthful days."

In the first war, Marshall continued, he had seen 27 of the 29 divisions sent into combat, "and there were more reliefs of field officers, those above the grade of captain, due to physical reasons than for any other cause."

The House committee had been unmoved, Marshall told Byrnes. Thsoe older officers had longstanding ties with congressmen and fought back; a sympathetic Chairman Andrew J. May of Kentucky held the bill in committee. "I was accused of getting rid of all the brains in the Army," Marshall said later. "I couldn't reply that I was eliminating considerable arteriosclerosis."

Cray at 174.

Byrnes helps and Marshall gets what he wants, indirectly. He also appoints a "plucking committee" of six retired officers headed by former Chief of Staff Marlin Craig and assigned htem to review the efficiency ratings of older officers. They were to weed out the worst.

Originally Posted by Cray

No action by Marshall would cause as much bitterness as his creation fo the plucking board. In its first six months, the panel removed 195 captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels; in the next five years it would ticket 500 colonels for immediate retirement. Marshall agreed in a later interview that the board had been "rutheless", but defended the retirments as necessary. Even years later, those officers forced into retirment without promotion to the rank of brigadier general, and their wives, could nto mention Marhsall's name without a curse.

. . . .

As the plucking board set to work, Marshall meanwhile drew up the first list of promotions to submti to the president. IN a year of decisions vital to the nation's rearmament, none would be more important than the selection of the Army's new leadership. Marshall would be shaping, as had Pershing before him an army in his own image.

Though he relied mainly on his prodigious memory for bothh success and failure, Marshall checked at least some of the names iwth his old mentor, General Pershing, during biweekly visits to the old man's suite at Walter Reed Hospital. The recommendations then went to Stimson for reivew.

Over a weekend at Highhold, the secretary and Marshall's old friend from Chicago, retired General Frank McCoy, examined the service records of each fo the chief of staff's nominations. Stimson was delighted, he noted in his diary, for Marhsall had tapped "several men whom McCoy and I knew to be good war men and yet who might not hav ehad as good a record on paper."

. . .

For every bitter colonel jumped by younger men, there was a more vigorous and delighted officer. Robert L. Eichelberger's happily weeping wife showed him the telegram announcing the promotion. The following day, George S. Patton, who had prviately feared his age would count against him, wired Eichelberger" "At last they have had sense enought o promote the two best damn officers in the U.S. Army."

Cray 176.

[Amnorix]

September 2

31 BC. The Battle of Actium, also known as "The Final Battle of the Roman Republic". A sea battle between the forces of Octavian, soon to be better known as Caesar Augustus, whose forces are commanded by the brilliant leader Agrippa, and the forces of Mark Antony supported by Egypt's Cleopatra results in a decisive victory for Octavian. As a result, a substantial portion of Mark Antony's land army, which had been equal in size to Octavian's, deserts. Within a little over a year Mark Antony and Cleopatra's military and political maneuverings would fail utterly and they would commit suicide. As a result of the battle, Octavian consolidated his power base in Rome and paved the way for his ascension to, effectively, emperor.

1666. The Great Fire of London breaks out, eventually destroying 10,000 buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral.

1752. Nearly 200 years after the rest of Europe, Great Britain finally adopts the Gregorian calendar. I admit I sometimes wonder if some future guy on a thread like this will post soemthing similar about the US adopting the metric system...

1789. The US Department of the Treasury is founded. On September 11th, Alexander Hamilton will be named its first secretary.

1792. In what will become known as the September Massacres, rampaging mobs involved int eh French Revolution kill three Catholic bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to support the royalty.

1864. The Union Army under General Sherman enters Atlanta, which had been abandoned by the Confederates overnight. This event essentially results in the successful reelection of Abraham Lincoln in the upcoming fall elections.

The capture of the city was also a critical military success, in that Atlanta was the "second city" (after Richmond) of the South, a central depot for the South's meager railroad lines, and a critical military production center. Within a few weeks, in response to the city council beseeching him for leniency, Sherman will famously reply (knowing full well he will raze the city to the ground when he leaves):

Originally Posted by William Tecumseh Sherman

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling.

1901. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt gives a speech at the Minnesota State Fair in which he proclaims, "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

1945. The Japanese sign the terms of their surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

[Jenson71]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

September 2

31 BC. The Battle of Actium, also known as "The Final Battle of the Roman Republic". A sea battle between the forces of Octavian, soon to be better known as Caesar Augustus, whose forces are commanded by the brilliant leader Agrippa, and the forces of Mark Antony supported by Egypt's Cleopatra results in a decisive victory for Octavian. As a result, a substantial portion of Mark Antony's land army, which had been equal in size to Octavian's, deserts. Within a little over a year Mark Antony and Cleopatra's military and political maneuverings would fail utterly and they would commit suicide. As a result of the battle, Octavian consolidated his power base in Rome and paved the way for . . . the greatest expansion of Western Civilization and ultimately, very directly, the cultural and political world we have today.

What a remarkable moment in history. I get goosebumps when I think of the victorious Octavian arriving in Alexandria, and going up to the tomb of the great Alexander III to pay respects. A physical, bodily 'meeting' of two of the most impressive, world-changing figures in human history. Imagine what was going through his mind!

[Amnorix]

September 3

590. Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great) is consecrated as Pope.

1189. Richard I (the Lionhearted) is crowned king.

1260. The Mamluks (the Sultanate of Egypt) defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking the point of furthest expansion of the Mongol empire. It is also the first decisive defeat of the Mongols that they were not able to avenge. The leaders of the MOngols at this time (though thousands of miles away from the battlefield) was Mongke Khan, grandson of Genghis.

1777. During the otherwise unmemorable battle of Cooch's Bridge, in Delaware, the US flag is flown in battle for the first time.

1783. The Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolution and grants independence to the colonies.

1838. Dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers from a black freeman, slave Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland traveling north.

1935. Sir Malcolm Campbell reaches a speed of 304.331 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah, becoming the first person to drive over 300 mph. I admit I had absolutely no idea that any automobile could go this fast in 1950, much less 1935.

1939. Following the German invasion of Poland, England, France, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany, forming the Allies.

[Amnorix]

September 4. (might as well get ahead here)


476. The Western Roman Empire comes to an end when Odoacer proclaims himself King of Italy, deposing the "emperor", Romulus Augustus.

1781. 44 Spanish settlers found a new city -- which translates into English as The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angles of Porziuncola, better known today as Los Angeles.

1862. Following his victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Confederate General Robert E. Lee takes his Army of Northern Virginia over to the offensive, and invades Maryland. He will eventually be checked at the battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg if you prefer, the single bloodiest day in the American history.

1870. Following his defeat and capture a few days earlier, French Emperor Napoleon III is deposed, adn the Third French Republic declared.

1884. Great Britain ends its policy of penal transportation to New South Wales, Australia.

1886. After 30 years of fighting, Geronimo surrenders with the last of his warriors, in Arizona.

1941. The Greer Incident. First I will quote the Wikipedia entry: "a German submarine makes the first attack against a United States ship, the USS Greer. " Makes it look like the Germans were the aggressors in this instance, of course. But they weren't, despite FDR's fireside chat which suggested that the Greer, a destroyer, only fired back on the U-Boat in self-defense. The reality is that the Greer was actively helping the British hunt down a U-Boat.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on the Greer incident in full, which is in accord with my memory of reading from various sources as well:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

At 0840 that morning, Greer, carrying mail and passengers to Iceland, was signaled by a British plane that a German submarine had crash-dived some 10 miles (16 km) ahead. Forty minutes later the destroyer's soundman picked up U-652, and Greer began to trail the submarine. The plane, running low on fuel, dropped four depth charges at 1032 and returned to base, while Greer continued to "trail the submarine, broadcasting its position."^[3] Two hours later the German boat began a series of radical maneuvers and Greer's lookouts saw her pass about 100 yards (100 m) off. An impulse bubble at 1248 warned Greer of a torpedo, and she rang up flank speed and bore rudder hard left. Lookouts watched the torpedo pass 100 yards (100 m) astern and the warship then charged in for an attack. She laid a pattern of eight depth charges which missed, and less than two minutes later a second torpedo passed 300 yards (300 m) to port.

Greer lost sound contact during the maneuvers, and began to quarter the area in search of the U-boat. After 2 hours, she re-established sound contact and laid down a pattern of 11 depth charges before discontinuing the engagement. Greer had held the German raider in sound contact 3 hours and 28 minutes^[3]; had evaded two torpedoes fired at her; and with her 19 depth charges had become the first American ship in World War II to attack the Kriegsmarine.

These revelations caused Arthur Krock to comment upon the argument "over who 'attacked' whom". Krock stated that a reasonable definition of the term "attack" is "an onset, an aggressive initiation of combat, a move which is the antithesis of 'defense' [, and by] that definition, all three of our destroyers (the Greer, the Kearny, and the Reuben James -- all in separate incidents) attacked the German submarines."

I also note taht the German navy (Kriegsmarine) was extremely strict in its policies regarding NOT attacking US vessels. The Germans wanted no part of the US joining the war, and of course incidents at sea had been a decisive element in the US joining the Triple Entente in WWI.

This is not to say, of course, that FDR wasn't justified in his actions, that Nazi Germany wasn't obviously evil, that the US shouldn't have helped, etc. I fully support all of FDR's actions. The fact is that the US was still extremely isolationist in its foreign policy mentality, and FDR could not provide all the help to the British that he wanted. He did whatever he could, however, and the result was incidents like this one, which was only the first of a number of "incidents" involving US warships and German U-Boats.

1950. The Southern 500 is run, the first 500 mile race in NASCAR history, at Darlington Raceway.

1957. Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls up the state militia to prevent African American students from enrolling at Central High School in Little Rock. His decision was in reaction to the SCOTUS's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education. President Eisenhower, however, will trump him by nationalizing the national guardsmen and ordering them to return to barracks, and sending the 101st Airborne to guarantee the passage of the students.

1957. A really great day in US history here in 1957. First political American makes itself look like jackasses, and then corporate America does the same. On this date -- Ford introduces it's new vehicle, with considerable publicity around "E-Day" for the Edsel.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

I also note taht the German navy (Kriegsmarine) was extremely strict in its policies regarding NOT attacking US vessels. The Germans wanted no part of the US joining the war, and of course incidents at sea had been a decisive element in the US joining the Triple Entente in WWI.

This is not to say, of course, that FDR wasn't justified in his actions. That Nazi Germany wasn't obviously evil, that the US shouldn't have helped, etc. I fully support all of FDR's actions. The fact is that the US was still extremely isolationist in its foreign policy mentality, and FDR could not provide all the help to the British that he wanted. He did whatever he could, however, and the result was incidents like this one, which was only the first of a number of "incidents" involving US warships and German U-Boats.

Just more proof that FDR had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor!

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Donger

Just more proof that FDR had foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor!

Gah! Don't give the loons any ideas!

[Amnorix]

September 5

1698. In an effort to westernize his hopelessly backward country, Tsar Peter I (the Great) of Russia imposes a tax on the beards of his subjects, except clergy and peasantry.

1774. The First Continental Congress assembles, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1781. The tactically inconclusive but strategically critical Battle of Chesapeake, or the Battle of the Capes, occurs off the coast of the Carolinas between French and British warships. Though neither side wins a decisive victory, the battle effectively prevents the British from either resupplying or withdrawing the forces of Lord Cornwallis, soon to be trapped at Yorktown and to surrender to George Washington. The surrender of Cornwallis's forces will directly lead to the start of peace talks and the eventual recognition fo the independence of the British colonies.

1945. In one of the first signals of the coming Cold War, a Russian embassy clerks defects to Canada and reveals information regarding Soviet espionage in North America.

1960. Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, wins the gold medal in the Olympics in Rome.

[kcpasco]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

September 5


1860. Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, wins the gold medal in the Olympics in Rome.

Damn is he really that old?